The Lost Ones
by JillianCasey
Summary: He isn't afraid of Kate in the crosshairs anymore. Right now, Castle is more afraid of his partner behind a gun than in front of one.
1. Chapter 1

This takes place after _Headhunters_ and before _Undead Again_. It's AU because, let's face it, Beckett is not going to know who arranged her mother's death anytime in the near future, and she's certainly not going to find out like this. I'm sure it will be epic and dangerous and blah blah. But thanks to the muse wanting them to deal with this now, in their current state of limbo, here we are. I'm purposefully vague about most of the details—I don't want it to be the centerpiece of the story.

For any of my italicized lines in the beginning to make sense, you may have to Google "Samuel Beckett's _The Lost Ones_" and read Wikipedia's synopsis. Or you could just ignore them. All quotes are from Samuel Beckett's _The Lost Ones_ or Antoni Libera's analysis of _The Lost Ones_ called "_The Lost Ones_: A Myth of Human History and Destiny." Obviously, I am not intelligent enough to have written either of those, so they do not belong to me.

Begrudging thanks to Cartographical. Thanks because she is wonderful at beta, and begrudging because she nagged me in bold capital letters until this was done. Also, something about promising to post once a day. So. I'll update every day, I guess. Ugh.

* * *

_In the very beginning, all the inhabitants were in motion: "all roamed without respite" but finally, after a long period of constant bustle, the first body ("the woman vanquished") gave up. What was the reason? Was it due to the lack of force or rather to a lack of belief in the existence of the exit? We have no direct answer. However, the fact that the observer names the still bodies "the vanquished ones" and their attitude "abandonment" suggests that it was the second case, a failure of belief._

Rick Castle knows moments.

He knows how to write them: how to create them with words and cadence, how to paint a picture with the curves and lines of letters and symbols.

He knows how to live them: no one who knows him would disagree that he's had his fair share of living, and though sometimes he regrets it, and sometimes he wishes his daughter had inherited more of his sense of adventure (he just doesn't want her to grow old and feel like she missed out), he feels content knowing that he's lived almost every moment he could have.

He knows how to let them go; he's let plenty of them go. He let Kyra go when she whispered in his ear, and that moonlit ride in a gondola in Venice that made him want to move to Europe, and the bright eyes and soft paws of a stray kitten he found and then had give up because his mother is allergic.

What he doesn't know, apparently, is how to wait for them. Ask him a month ago, and he would've told you that he is, hands down, without a doubt, the master waiter. After all, he has waited four years for his beautiful partner to be ready, waited less than four years but still a significant amount of time for himself to be ready, and he has withstood handsome robbery detectives and hulking GQ surgeons and snipers and damn it, he never thought it would be _her_ that made him stop waiting.

So, he supposes he waited incorrectly, perhaps by waiting in the first place. All this time he has misread her and them and the promise he thought for sure was looming on the horizon. Somehow, he has gotten their moments wrong. Or she has. Or they both have.

What he knows for sure is that this case, the one he's got up on his Smartboard right now, has eaten way too many of his moments. Before, he didn't mind. It was insatiable, but he didn't care, because the way he felt about her was insatiable too, and so it was a nice pairing. Now, though…he can't get over her if he's immersed in the definition of who she is, can he?

He puts the files on a flash drive, stacks all the papers, makes a nice little bundle for Ryan and Esposito. That's when he sees it. An hour and three phone calls later, he knows it'll be over soon. Maybe he should feel bad about it. About not calling her, or involving her at all. He chalks it up to one last gallant effort to protect her. His final gift. The next day, he meets Ethan Slaughter, and in the days after that, he forgets what he did.

And then another moment knocks. It's Saturday morning. He's looking over her case in his office one last time, because he can't stop thinking about how she put her job on the line for him. She shows up at his door, leather jacket he gave to Slaughter folded over her arm, demands to know _what hell has gotten into you, you insufferable jerk_. He ushers her into his office and away from a stunned Alexis, and while they're in the midst of fighting and he's in the middle of ripping her to shreds for lying, she freezes, staring over his shoulder. He turns, confused, stops dead when he realizes he left her case up on his Smartboard. It's all over after that, because he's a hypocrite and she's half heartbroken, half furious at his betrayal, but she's still a liar and really, when did they get to this place?

And then, suddenly, her phone rings, and she answers, and nothing matters anymore. Nothing except the way she breathes _what?_ and the way her face grows pale, the way she collapses into one of his leather chairs.

_Kate_, he says. Gets on his knees in front of her, because something is wrong, he knows his partner and she doesn't make faces like that unless…unless…_Kate_.

Her hand is over her mouth. He thinks for sure she's stifling a sob. When she hangs up, she reaches out, grabs a fistful of the fabric of his shirt on his shoulder. A barrage of horror rollercoasters through his brain. Esposito got shot. Ryan and Jenny were in a car crash. Her father is dead. Something horrible, something…

"They broke my mom's case."

He can't breathe.

Nothing really matters after that. It's hard to be mad at Kate Beckett when she's trying not to cry and asking if you'll go with her to see the man behind the deaths of her mother and her mentor.


	2. Chapter 2

_All activities seem to have one purpose: finding a way out of the cylinder._

She moves robotically when they get back to her apartment late that afternoon. Puts her keys in the decorative bowl on the front table, drapes her coat over the couch, reaches into the refrigerator for a bottle of wine, pours two glasses. They're all things he's seen her do before, but today they're different. Today she looks like she actually has to think about them, as if she's doing them for the first time, and he can't move because he's afraid at any second she's going to collapse on the floor and start sobbing.

His Kate, though, is always a surprise. She looks up from the glasses, arches an eyebrow. "Castle? You forget how to breathe?"

His Kate knows him well too. He exhales sharply. He didn't realize he'd been holding it in. "Sorry," he mutters.

She smiles. No joy, but it's still genuine. "You want to talk about it?"

That's too much. "Damn it, Kate."

Her smile fades. The wine bottle is still in her hand, tipped to the side but not enough that anything is spilling out. She frowns, her eyebrows gathering. "What?"

"Nothing," he says, catching himself. "Nothing." Because if this is how she wants to deal, and she needs him to act normal, and she needs to act normal, then okay, he can do that. Or at least die trying.

"Castle," she says. There's a warning in her tone, and he doesn't understand why, but she suddenly looks afraid.

"Kate, it's fine."

"I don't—"

"It's just been a big day, but I can—"

"I don't _want_ you to—"

"You should do what you need to do."

She doesn't say anything to that. She sets the wine bottle down on the counter with a thump. Swallows hard, her elegant throat constricting. Her eyes are wet. Shit. He made her cry.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

Her voice is so soft, so frail and fragile and everything that Kate Beckett rarely is, that he can't stop himself from moving toward her.

"Kate, honey, you can do—"

"Don't _honey_ me," she orders, but it lacks all of its usual authority, and her eyes are brimming now.

He ignores her. "You can do whatever you want."

She grips the sides of the counter, looks down. He follows her gaze, sees her knuckles are white. "Aren't I supposed to feel free?" she whispers.

He curls his hands into fists so he won't touch her. "You're not _supposed_ to feel anything. There aren't any rules for this sort of thing."

"Maybe there should be."

"Maybe." He searches desperately for something else. "We could make them," he blurts out.

She barks out a laugh, swipes at her eyes.

"No, I'm serious," he continues. "We can write them down and then people will know what to do when…"

He trails off. Immediately feels like an ass. She looks up at him, gives him a watery smile.

"When they catch the man who arranged their mother's murder? Or when they lie to their partner for a year because they're too emotionally damaged to deal with the truth?"

He lifts a shoulder. "Maybe we could be more vague about it so it applies to various situations?"

She shakes her head, her smile widening. "Castle."

"I'm sorry."

She brushes the pads of her fingers over one of his closed fists. "Don't."

"Don't apologize?"

"That too. But don't not touch me, either," she says, moving her fingertips to the inside of his wrist and then down toward his palm. He holds his breath. She can always read his mind. He looks down, opens his hand up, watches as her fingers trail over his palm.

"I don't really know what I'm supposed to do either," he confesses.

She turns her body toward him, laces her fingers with his. He looks up at her. She's watching him from underneath her long, dark eyelashes, one of those looks that reminds him of how much of an idiot he is for thinking he could capture her with words and limit her to a page number.

She bites her lip. "We're kind of a mess, huh?"

He smiles. "Haven't we always been?"

"Yes."

He brushes her hair away from her face with the hand that isn't holding hers. "A beautiful mess, though."


	3. Chapter 3

"_One school swears by a secret passage branching from one of the tunnels and leading, in the words of the poet, to nature's sanctuaries. The other dreams of a trapdoor hidden in the hub of the ceiling, giving access to a flue at the end of which the sun and other stars would still be shining."_

"Do you want to know something?"

He turns his head to look at her. They've been sitting next to each other on the couch, not touching, for at least an hour. Before she called her dad, she'd clung to him. If her body wasn't pressed against his, her hands were holding his, dancing over his back and his arms and his face. Afterward, Castle gave her some space, and she never crossed the boundary again. She hung up a while ago, but she didn't say anything and he didn't want to push, so they just sat.

The room has grown considerably darker since the last time he looked at her, but he can still see the outline of her face. She's staring straight ahead, at nothing in particular, her lips parted slightly. Her shoulders lift and fall unhurriedly as she inhales and exhales. He wants to touch her again.

"Yes," he says instead.

"Do you remember the first day we started working together? When you asked me why I decided to be a cop?"

He nods. "Yeah."

She's silent for a moment, breathing. She doesn't look at him. "I tell people it was because of my mother. I said I wanted to catch guys like the ones that killed her. The ones that—" she closes her mouth abruptly and swallows. "You know."

He knows. And it breaks him in half.

"It's not a complete lie," she continues. "I did. I do. But back then, there was something else. If I'd just wanted to put the bad guys away, I could've stayed on the path I was on. Become a DA, be the face of justice in a courtroom."

She bites her lip around what looks like half a smile. He frowns, confused, until he looks at her closer. That's not a smile. It's too rueful, almost bitter, and she stops his analysis with her next words.

"At least that way I wouldn't have heard over and over again how she wouldn't want me to do this." She sighs heavily. "She would've been proud if I'd been a lawyer like her."

"Kate," Rick starts, moving toward her.

She puts a hand up to stop him. "I know, Castle. I know."

He stops, tensed in his half-completed attempt to be closer to her. Their gazes hold, and he tries to decide what to do, realizes that she isn't done with her story and the too-bright gleam in her eyes is telling him she needs to finish.

He settles back onto the couch. "So why become a cop?"

She looks at the floor immediately, chews her lip, and the silence grows more and more oppressive. Dread gnaws at him, clawing to get free. He swallows it. Won't let it out. Not now. Not with her.

"It was the risk," she finally murmurs. "The danger. The idea that I could die at any second. It's why I was thrilled when I got promoted to Vice before I came to Homicide. A female Vice detective…it's dangerous. I got used as bait a lot. And I was glad. I liked staring mortality in the face."

The rip in his heart tears a little farther when he realizes what she's saying. He takes a deep, steadying breath, forces the words out. "You wanted to die?"

She finally looks at him. Her eyes are gleaming in the dusk, wet from the tears she refuses to let fall, and he feels such a flurry of emotion that it staggers him. Half of him is bellowing with rage, ready to rip to shreds the next person that even looks at her the wrong way, but the other half of him…God, he's never been so sad. So heartbroken. He wants to fix it all, make it all go away, give her back the life that was stolen from her.

But he can't.

"Maybe," she whispers.

This time he can't stop himself. Something propels him across the couch toward her, something that he knows is love but feels an awful lot like terror. A sob rests deep in his throat, threatening but still for now.

She's ready for him, doesn't fight him when he wraps his arms around her in a bear hug and pulls her into his lap. She settles her face into his neck, her fingers dipping beneath his collar to hang on to his shirt, the backs of her nails pressed against his collarbone.

He holds her tighter, buries his nose into her hair, revels in the feel of her breath on his skin.

"I don't want to now," she murmurs. "I don't."

"Kate," he says, but it comes out on top of a sob, and he feels ridiculous because he's crying but he doesn't care.

"I don't," she insists, pressing her face into his neck. "I don't want to die."

"You won't."

She puffs out a breath, hot on his neck, and he wonders if she's crying too. "There are other ways to die."

He didn't realize he was rocking her slowly back and forth, not until her words bring him to a complete stop. He swallows, feels the terrible dread for the second time since he sat next to her on this couch.

"Like what?" he asks, proud of how steady his voice is.

She smoothes her fingers over his collar, moves them down to rest over his heart. "Losing someone."

"Someone's not going anywhere," he answers. "Someone doesn't say always if they don't mean always."

"Someone is abusing the third person."

He laughs, caught off guard. He can't see her face, but he knows she's smiling. He presses his lips to the crown of her head. "Someone isn't used to loving someone smarter than him."

It's her turn to go still. He waits, not the least bit sorry. She traces a pattern on his shirt, still over his heart, with her index finger. He watches her finger move, thinks about what a mess of a pattern it is. No straight lines, just jagged edges, sharp curves, twists and turns that are seemingly endless. He'll follow her through that pattern. He already is.

"It's not just losing someone," she says. "You can lose yourself."

He waits. She doesn't say anything. Her finger stops moving. "Kate?" he prompts.

"What if I'm lost?"

He swallows around the lump in his throat. "Then we'll find you."

She pulls away, looks at him with a mixture of fear and hope in her eyes that completely bowls him over. "Castle?" she breathes.

He runs his thumb over her bottom lip. Can't help it. "Beckett?" he says.

"You'll help me find me?"

He smiles. "Haven't I always?"

She shifts in his lap, looks suddenly nervous. It's kind of adorable. He waits, though. She rewards him for it, though he's not sure if it's for waiting now or waiting all year.

She presses her lips against his, her hands on either side of his face. It's chaste, and soft, and unbearably sweet. Only lasts two seconds, maybe three. When she pulls away, she rests her forehead against his.

"I love you, too," she whispers.

A thump of agony hits him in the stomach. What if she doesn't mean it? What if today has made her think she does? Or what if she really does mean it, and today has just given her the courage? Either way, he can't breathe.

"It's been a hell of a day for you," he finally manages to say. He has to give her an out. He has to know she means this. Has to know that she's in this because if she's not and she's just looking for something to cling to, it will break him.

"Yeah," she agrees, still holding his face, still with her forehead resting against his. "Kind of like when I was dying and you told me for the first time."

He should add _calling him on his shit_ to the list of things his Kate is good at. "Touché," he murmurs.

She sighs, rubs his earlobe with the pad of her thumb. "Castle."

"Beckett."

"Say it again?"

He does.


	4. Chapter 4

This posting every day thing is really kicking my butt. Thanks for all your lovely reviews. Friendly reminder, though: if you're waiting to see who was behind Johanna Beckett's murder, or what Castle found and who he called, you're going to be disappointed. That's not what I'm going for here. Sorry :(

* * *

_C__onsidering that each body requires a different amount of time to go through the whole cycle, the body that will remain will be the one that requires the most. _

She falls asleep on his chest. He doesn't dare move. He knows that his neck will be sore the next day, but he's willing to trade that comfort for the warm weight of Kate Beckett breathing slowly against him. Just before he succumbs to sleep, he wonders if she'll have nightmares. He glances down at her through heavy lids, but she looks peaceful, her fingers curled around the lapels of his jacket. He decides that tonight, at least, she might be safe, even if only because she's so tired.

When he wakes, it's to the shrill ring of her cell phone. She stirs against his chest, rubbing her eyes. He's woken up with her before. That one time they got prodded during the alien case, and then when they were cuffed together in that horrible dungeon of a basement next to a tiger. This isn't like that. This is Kate Beckett blinking at him sleepily, an innocence that he isn't accustomed to seeing from her. He wonders if the innocence would still be there if they'd shared anything more than that one kiss before she fell asleep. That thought, of course, is a horrible idea when she's sprawled over his chest.

"Hi," he murmurs. His voice is strained. Probably because he's mentally reciting baseball stats so he won't think about her naked.

"Hi," she starts, but is cut off by her phone ringing again. She sighs, runs a hand through her hair. "Shit."

"Mmm," he mutters noncommittally, then promptly chokes because _does she have to shift in his lap like that?_

"Beckett," she answers as she sits up, still tousling her hair. That's not helping. Her fingers are very slender, and they move very fluidly, and the morning light is catching her hair just right, and he hasn't really allowed himself to oogle her in weeks because you don't oogle people you're mad at.

He's oogling now, though.

"No, no I'm fine," she says into the phone. "I'm on call regardless of yesterday. Yeah. I know where it is."

She glances at him out of the corner of her eye, catches him with his mouth open a little. It doesn't register with her right away, but he knows the second it does, because she turns back to him with an arched eyebrow and just enough of a smirk that he wonders how in the hell he thought he was going to get over her.

"Mmm," she hums to whoever is on the line. Esposito or Ryan. Doesn't matter. She's looking at _him_, biting her lip, and he really wants to kiss her. Really, really wants to just slide his fingers into her hair and pull her down and nibble on her—

"Give us twenty minutes."

She freezes. He freezes. Her eyes widen. "Us?" he stage whispers to her.

She waves at him furiously. "Don't be a child," she growls into the phone, turning away from him. "Yeah, no, that's the definition of child."

Castle snickers. She turns, glares at him, and he puts his hands up. _Sorry,_ he mouths.

"I'm hanging up now," she says into the phone. She's still glaring.

"That wasn't my fault," he says after she hangs up.

"Shut up. You need to go home and change."

"Why?"

"Because this," she waves between them, "doesn't need to be all over the precinct."

"This," he echoes, also waving between them, "has been all over the precinct for four years."

"Not lately," she corrects.

That brings the moment to a screeching halt. He thinks of Jacinda, not even in the same ballpark as the woman next to him on the couch. "Kate," he starts.

"Shh," she orders. She stands up. "Later. Now, dead bodies."

He stares up at her. "Do you think it's a bad sign if I associate dead bodies with sex?"

She gapes at him.

"I mean, cause you're there," he corrects. Doesn't make it better. He shakes his head. "No. I mean. I'm just trying to tell you that…well, it's not like…"

"Shh," she says again, only this time she bends over and says it in his ear. He catches a glimpse of her grin right before she kisses his jawline. "I know what you meant."

He touches her hips because, well, he can do that now. He thinks. She doesn't punch him, so yes, apparently he can. "We could save some water and shower together."

She laughs, low and throaty, stands up and gives him a wicked grin. "I'll text you the address. Bring my coffee."

And then she disappears down the hallway to her bedroom and he thinks that really, if he'd known that having Kate Beckett tell him she loved him too meant he would be _more_ frustrated, then perhaps he would have told her to keep it to herself.

X-X-X-X-X

He's halfway back to the loft when he remembers why he was at her apartment in the first place. Her mother's case—it's over.

Should she really be going back to work?

He pulls out his phone, types out a quick text that he hopes doesn't sound too fatherly.

_Hey you. Maybe you should take some time off before you go back to catching bad guys?_

He hits send, immediately regrets it. _Hey you_? What the hell. You? He went with _you_? Why not Kate? Beckett? KB? For God's sake, _Becksie_ would've been better than—

His phone chirps. He hurriedly taps in his code so he can read her message.

_Cute. I'll be fine. Extra shot of espresso, please._

God, he loves this woman.

X-X-X-X-X

She's not fine.

He doesn't notice right away. The first day, when they deliver the news to the next of kin, she sounds a little shakier than normal. When he peers at her, her face is perfectly schooled. When she gets more frustrated than she should at a dead end and slams the whiteboard marker down, he peers at her again. She sighs and tells him she needs coffee. He tells himself she's telling the truth, and that even if she hadn't gone through what she did yesterday, this case would still get to her. A dead pregnant woman who bled out in her own living room? Of course that gets to her. That would get to anyone with a soul. She's fine. They're fine.

That night, he invites her over for dinner. She eats but doesn't stay. He kisses her good night at the door, a little less chaste but still unbearably sweet. He can barely fall asleep because he can't stop thinking about her smile as she left.

Then he sees her the next morning.

Her eyes are bloodshot. Her shoulders are straight and tense, the line of her jaw unforgiving as she taps on her keyboard with a little more force than necessary.

"Kate?" he calls.

She jumps in surprise. _Jumps_. She turns to him, eyes wide and startled, and he stares.

"Oh," she says, a little too breathless. "Hi."

He still stares.

She nods at the coffee in his hand. "That for me?"

He pulls it away when she reaches for it. When she looks up at him questioningly, he tilts his head at her. "What happened?"

"Nothing," she says.

"Liar," he says.

She clenches her jaw. "I'm just tired, Castle. Give me the coffee. Please?"

He does, but as he sits in his chair, he studies her. Notices that her hair is up instead of down, pulled back in a messy bun. He sees she's wearing mascara, no eye liner. Jeans and a shirt and a leather jacket, as casual as she gets at work. She doesn't sip her coffee; she gulps it.

He doesn't say anything. He wants to investigate more, wants to be sure before he informs her that she's not okay, she needs time off, and she needs to quit lying to him about how she feels in all the little ways too, not just the big ones.

And then Esposito is there, like he always fucking is, and within an hour they're all decked out in their vests and Kate is checking the bullets in her gun. He's staring at her and she knows it. He can tell by the way her lips are pursed.

"Castle," she says without meeting his gaze.

"Yeah," he says. "Stay behind you, stay quiet. Got it."

"You can add stop psychoanalyzing me to the list," she says, looking up at him.

He nods. "Yeah. Sure. As soon as you tell me what's going on."

She shakes her head. "No sniper this time."

"Does it matter?"

She snaps her cartridge back into place with a little more force than necessary. "Aren't we past this?"

"You tell me, Kate."

"Uh, guys?" Ryan says. "We good?"

Castle glares at him. Kate nods. "Yeah. Let's go."

He watches her still. Admires how fluidly she moves in a bulky vest and leg holster that is really, really sexy when she's wearing a black leather jacket too. He envies how flawless her calm is in the face of the heart-pounding rush of a takedown, confident even when Esposito and Ryan peel off to look at another hallway.

And then it's not flawless, and she's in a bit of a scuffle with the suspect, and for a brief second, the guy's gun is pointed right at Castle's head. He stills, a deer in headlights.

But Kate is there, Kate is cracking the butt of her gun across the suspect's face, Kate is standing over him with her gun pointed at the center of his forehead and she isn't Kate anymore, she's an angel of death with murder in her eyes and Castle has never been more terrified of anyone. Because when he calls her name, when she looks at him, he doesn't see anything looking back at him.


	5. Chapter 5

Happy Birthday to Cartographical, and Happy Monday to everybody else.

* * *

_[He] echoes the image with the description of "the first among the vanquished": "She squats against the wall with her head between her knees and her legs in her arms. The left hand clasps the right shinbone and the right the left forearm. The left foot is crossed on the right." _

…_it shows that the inhabitants of the cylinder long for a world different from the one that they know._

Its déjà vu, or something more terrible, because their suspect is sprawled on the ground and Kate is standing over him, her finger on the trigger. It's that California beach all over again, except this time it isn't Mike Royce's killer. It's not even her mother's killer, but Castle knows that's what she sees. She sees her mother and Montgomery and scars marring her perfect skin and everything that's been haunting her for more than a decade.

He read about this. Back during the sniper case when he couldn't sleep because he was so worried about her. _The patient may experience __strong, uncomfortable reactions to situations that remind them of the event._

He thinks, maybe, that her consciousness of what happened two days ago has bled into her consciousness of today. She can't separate the man behind the murder from the suspect in front of her, and even though they're both murderers, they're not the same kind of murderers, because one of them took nearly everything from her and the other is just a crime-of-passion asshole that shot his pregnant wife.

"Kate," Castle rasps.

The line of her jaw is a threat that makes him stiffen in preparation for a gunshot. "Get out of here, Castle," she says.

He moves forward, stops a few feet away from her. "You know I can't do that."

She glances at him quickly out of the corner of her eye, but says nothing.

"It's over now, Kate. You got him. Cuff him."

"He doesn't deserve to live."

"No, he doesn't. But you don't want to do this. You're better than that."

"No. I'm not."

Panic pumps through his veins. She's going to do it. She's going to kill this guy in cold blood and then they're going to take her badge, put her on trial, make her the criminal.

He has to stop them. Has to stop _her_.

"Kate," he pleads. "Please don't do this. It's over. Let it be over."

She doesn't take her eyes off the man. "I can't do it, Castle. I can't let him walk out of here alive. All this has to end somewhere."

It's dangerous, the next idea that pops into mind, but he doesn't have anything less. It's either going to be his trump card or her catalyst, and he'll never forgive himself if it's the second, but he's never going to forgive himself for letting her come back to work in the first place, so it doesn't really matter.

"Your mother," he says. "You think she'd want this?"

"_Don't_," she orders, turning her cold, furious eyes on him.

"You know she wouldn't," he pushes. "And you don't want it either."

The fury in her eyes is still stunning, but there's something else too. Something he clings to, because it's the only hope he's got right now. "And what about you?" she says. "Can you handle a fallen muse?"

He shrugs. "I don't know. But the woman I love would never make me find out." He creeps toward her, moving as fast as he dares. He doesn't want to scare her. He keeps his voice low, soothing. "Give me the gun, and cuff that son of a bitch." He reaches her, slides his right hand along her arm, up over her wrist. He puts his mouth by her ear. "Cuff him, Detective Beckett."

He wraps his hand around the gun, and she releases it. She reaches back on her belt for her cuffs. The suspect leers at her.

"I knew you wouldn't do it, you weak little bi—"

Kate kicks him across the jaw, a sickening crack that echoes through the room. The man cries out and clutches his face. Kate glares down at him.

"Shut the fuck up."

She bends over, pulls his hands away from his face and slaps the cuffs on him. "You have the right to remain silent."

X-X-X-X-X

"We should talk," he says in her ear as Esposito shoves the suspect into the back of his cruiser.

She turns to look at him. She pulls her lip beneath her teeth. "I'm going to go see Dr. Burke."

He nods. "Yeah. Good idea. And you'll…you'll call me after?"

He knows as soon as he sees the way her expression changes what she's going to say. "Castle. Rick. I think…maybe I should process?"

"Alone," he adds for her.

She sighs. "I don't want you to think I didn't mean what I said."

He shakes his head. "No, I get it. It's fine."

Except it's not fine. She drops him off at his loft and he watches her pull away and his traitorous mind makes him think all sorts of things. That she's not really going to see Burke, she's actually going to get drunk, or do something stupid and dangerous, and he wants to follow her but that'd be a little too stalkerish, even under the circumstances of this afternoon.

So he lets her go. He drinks scotch in his office and tries to write, but Nikki's face is always Kate's, and the only thing he sees when he closes his eyes is the coldness in her eyes that he's never seen before.

And then, at 8:05, his phone buzzes. It's her. Only three words.

_Come over? Please._

X-X-X-X-X

He pauses in front of her door, out of breath. Should he knock? Should he just go in? Maybe he should text her, tell her that he's there. Or call. He could call.

Or he could grow a pair and knock like a normal human being.

He knocks. Waits. "Kate," he calls. "It's me."

"S'open," he hears her call back, but he has to strain to hear it. She must be deep back in her apartment, maybe even in her bedroom. He opens the door, hurries forward, nearly trips over her.

He yelps, startled, and looks down. There are no lights on. She's sitting on the floor, her knees gathered to her chest and her arms wrapped around her shins. She's gripping her gun in one hand, knuckles white around the handle. He wonders if the safety is on.

"Kate," he breathes.

She turns her face up to him. He sees the stains of the tears on her cheeks. She inhales, a shuddering breath that tells him she's been crying for quite a while.

He crouches in front of her, thumbs away one of the trails of tears. "What are you doing sitting on the floor?" he asks.

"As far as I got," she answers, punctuates it with a sniff. She holds up her gun between their faces. "I would've killed him."

He shakes his head. "I don't know if that's true."

"I do."

She dips her head forward, between her knees. When she taps the muzzle of the gun against her forehead, he nearly has a heart attack.

"Would've killed him," she says again.

He puts his hands over hers, tries to pull the gun from her grasp for the second time that day. "Let go," he tells her gently when her grip tightens.

She obeys. He sets the gun on the floor behind him, his knees creaking in protest. When he turns back to her, she's staring at him, her eyes bright. "I couldn't because of you."

He swallows. "Because I was a witness?"

"Because I love you," she corrects. "Because I couldn't see myself in your eyes anymore."

She's being poetic, and it throws him off because usually he's the one that does that, and usually she just rolls her eyes. But she's so fragile, and Jesus, a few seconds ago she was touching the muzzle of her Glock to her forehead, and he can't take her like this. He can't. She's going to give him a heart attack.

"What do you mean?" he asks.

She puts her hand, the one that just held the gun, against his face, her palm touching his cheek. "When I look at you, I can see me. The me I want to be."

"That's what love is," he tells her.

"You found me again," she whispers.

He sits on the floor, pulls her against his chest. She settles there, her face in his neck, the same place as the last night he held her in this apartment, the place he's starting to feel like she belongs.

"I'll always find you."


	6. Chapter 6

_[And the bodies] are divided into four groups: those who are in motion_

He stands next to her when she hands in her paperwork for a leave of absence.

Dr. Burke's signature is still fresh, black ink on the white page. Gates studies them over the rims of her glasses. She's obviously not sure why Castle needs to be here for this, but he doesn't care. Kate asked him to be here. When she asks, he can't say no. Especially not when he knows that after they leave this office, they're driving to the Hamptons.

"You're sure you need this?" Gates asks.

Castle wants to punch her. Kate nods, resolute. "Yes, Sir. Dr. Burke thinks that after all that happened with my mother's case…well, you don't need a volatile detective, do you?"

She rocks back on her heels, brushing her shoulder against Castle's chest. He pushes against her gently, just to let her know he's there.

"No, I don't," Gates muses, reading over the paperwork. "One month?"

"One month," Kate echoes. "Just as a precaution."

"And you," Gates says, leveling her glare at Castle. "You won't be here during Detective Beckett's absence."

It's not a question. "No, Sir," he says, trying not to smile. "I'll be out of your hair."

Gate glances between the two of them, a suspicious squint in her eyes. "Very well," she says. "Detectives Ryan and Esposito will have a lot on their plates."

Castle sees Kate glance out at the bullpen. The boys are playing paper football. She smiles a little. "I think they'll be just fine."

X-X-X-X-X

He isn't sure how she'll react when she gets to his beach house.

Even though it's the most subdued of his neighborhood, it's still a massive house that sits on a private beach in the Hamptons. She doesn't say much. She wanders through the house, stops to take in every room. He wonders if he should be offended that she's looking everything over the same way she looks at a crime scene. When she meets his eyes briefly in one of the bedrooms, then promptly looks away with a shy smile—is she _blushing_?—he decides he can't really be offended if it turns him on.

Finally, they get to his study. She runs her fingers along the bookshelves. She pauses to read the spines of his books, bites her lip and brushes her index finger over the vivid blue letters of an EE Cummings paperback.

"You like Cummings?" he asks.

She looks at him over her shoulder. He catches it before it disappears, the hint of surprise that sometimes flits through her eyes when she realizes that he knows her so well.

"I do," she says. She ducks her head, hides what is the beginning of a gorgeous grin. "I didn't at first."

Oh, he is so intrigued. "Why's that?"

She shrugs, tames her grin into a smile that's stunning in a different way. "He doesn't capitalize very well."

Castle can't help it; he throws back his head and laughs. When he looks at her again, she looks so damned pleased with herself that she's made him laugh that he can barely stand it.

"That's true," he says. He puts his hands in his pockets, because otherwise he's going to want to close the distance between them and touch her. "But when you know the rules, you can break them."

Her eyes go cloudy and distant. She nods. "Yeah. True."

He searches for a way to bring her back, comes up empty. She does it for him—she moves across the room toward the French doors, the mist in her eyes evaporating as she goes. He watches as she opens the doors, steps out onto his deck. The sun hits her hair and he stares at her, wonders if he'll ever get used to sharing space with her, air with her. He hopes not. He doesn't want to forget what it's like to feel this way.

He follows her onto the deck. She's made her way out to the banister, is leaning her elbows on the wood. He stops next to her and follows her gaze out to the ocean.

"Nice view," she says.

He nods. "Why I bought it."

"You like the beach?"

"Doesn't everybody?"

"I guess."

His stomach drops. "Well…you do. Right?"

She looks at him, breaks into an immediate smile. "God, Castle."

"_What_?"

"Can you stop freaking out?"

"I'm not freaking out!"

"You are. What were you going to do if I said I didn't like the beach?"

"Fly you to the mountains."

She laughs, but the way her eyes widen just a little tells him that she knows he's serious and that she's flattered. She loves him too, remember?

"Castle," she says. She turns around, puts her back to the ocean and leans against the banister. "Does it feel different?"

"Does what feel different?"

"This. Me being here. Knowing I'm in love with you."

He stares at her. She hasn't really said it since that night in her apartment. He didn't need her to, but…no, he did. He needed to hear it again, and now that he has, his heart is pounding against his ribcage. This woman. Always giving him a heart attack in one way or another.

"It's new," he admits. "But it's not…I don't know."

"Am _I _different?" she asks. "Aside from my mom's…aside from that. Am I different?"

He shakes his head. "No."

"Neither are you. You know why?"

He feels a bit like a child, the way she's leading him, but her voice is low and her eyes are dancing in the sunlight and he loves her too much to care. "No. Why?"

"Because it doesn't change what we are. It just makes us more."

He wants to kiss her. Oh, God, he wants to kiss her so bad, but she's emotionally fragile and a few days ago she'd almost murdered a man because she's so scarred, and he can't put himself first in this. Not with Kate Beckett.

"I'm not made of glass," she whispers.

He snaps out of his thoughts, stares at her. Did he say that all out loud? No. He didn't. She's just that good.

"I won't break if you touch me," she rephrases. She dips her head toward him, scrunches her nose playfully. "I might even like it."

"I'm respecting your boundaries."

She tries and fails to hide a smile. "I don't have those anymore."

"Kate—"

"Rick," she cuts him off. "I don't want you in my bed. Not now, anyway. Right now, all I want is for you to stop thinking so hard and come here. I promise I won't steal your virtue."

He tiptoes closer. Just a step.

"Yeah," she says. "Obviously that's what I meant."

He shuffles a little closer, his arm brushing hers. He's still facing the ocean, and she's still got her back to it.

"Mmm," she hums. "Getting warmer."

He moves in closer, their hips bumping. He leans forward, stops a few inches from her mouth.

"Closer," she breathes against his lips.

He closes the distance and kisses her. When she pushes her tongue past his lips and into his mouth, he puts his hands on the banister, boxing her in. She likes that; she arches into him, holding tight to the lapels of his jacket, keeping him close. Like he would go anywhere. He couldn't if he wanted to.

He pulls away after a while, breathless. "Close enough," he says.

She laughs. "For now."

X-X-X-X-X

For the rest of the afternoon and well into the night, he almost forgets why they came out here. She smiles, touches him, laughs at him. He's happy and free and it's what he's always wanted for them, so it's easy to pretend like everything is okay.

Except it's not.

He wakes to a scream. They'd fallen asleep huddled together on the couch, watching reruns of _Friends_. The last thing he remembers is smiling at the show and smiling at Kate murmuring in her sleep. Right now, she's sitting bolt up right next to him, clutching at her throat like someone is strangling her.

It scares the hell out of him. He reaches for her blindly, not thinking, and she scrambles away from him, eyes wide and terrified. Her hair is tousled from sleep and it falls in her eyes; she brushes it away quickly, her other hand still grasping her throat. She's hyperventilating like she's having an asthma attack, but she keeps moving until her back hits the wall. She moves along the wall, finally stops when she hits the corner past the television that is still on.

He stands stock still, his hands out in the most unaggressive gesture he can think of. Waits. Jennifer Aniston's voice fills the room, followed by a laugh reel. He can barely hear it over how hard Kate is breathing.

"Kate," he says. His heart is pounding. "It's only me."

She doesn't answer.

"It's me," he says again. "Castle. I'm going to…I'm coming closer."

She stares at him. He takes a tentative step forward. Another. The television flicks to a commercial, and suddenly her shoulders sag.

He watches as she buries her head in her hands, slides down the wall until her knees are at her chest. He stops, not sure what to do. She looks up at him.

"Castle."

He's across the room in a heartbeat, pulling her against him. She goes willingly, clutches at his shirt. Her breathing has slowed considerably. They sit in silence for a while. He watches the light from the TV play over the now-empty couch, listens to a mindless commercial for athlete's foot cream.

"Nightmare?" he finally asks.

She traces a pattern over his chest. "I dreamt you couldn't find me," she whispers.

"Just a dream."

"Do you know that moment in your dreams when you realize you're in a dream?"

He nods. "Yeah. Did you find it?"

"That's how I knew," she says. "When you couldn't find me, that's when I knew it was a dream."


	7. Chapter 7

_those who pause sometimes,_

She goes for a run the next morning. Her body has an internal alarm clock that wakes her up at seven. His body decidedly does not. She tells him she doesn't want to get out of shape, and she might as well use the time wisely. He offers to go with her, but she smiles and says that if she's going to wake him up at all hours of the night, the least she can do is let him sleep in.

She leaves him in bed. He inhales into one of the pillows after she leaves. They moved to his bedroom last night after her nightmare. One of these days the electricity they've been feeding off of since the day they met is going to make them combust. For now, she's healing and he's content in the knowledge that she loves him, and sleeping together is enough without sleeping together. He drifts off to sleep with what is probably a disgustingly stupid smile on his face.

When he wakes again, he hears faint rustling. He frowns, rubs his eyes. Sits up. His bathroom light is on. Kate is using his bathroom? He knows this, already; her shampoo is in there, and her body wash, and her pretty pink razor. He watched her put them in the shower last night. But none of that really registered—Kate Beckett naked in his shower didn't register until just now, when she slips into his bedroom in nothing but a towel, her wet hair around her shoulders.

She rummages through a dresser drawer, oblivious to the way he's gaping at her. The fluffy white towel barely covers the curve of her ass. She turns, startles when she sees him awake.

"_Shit_. Castle. When did you…?"

"Sorry," he yelps, throwing his arm over his face. "Sorry. I didn't…sorry. Woke up earlier than I thought."

No answer. He shifts beneath the sheets. He hopes she's not embarrassed. Certainly nothing to be embarrassed about. His partner is a beautiful woman. All legs and creamy skin and the play of the muscles in her back while she looked through that drawer, her wet hair clinging to her bare shoulders…

Oh, God, he is not going to make it out of this house alive.

He pauses. Still no noise. Did she leave?

He peeks out from under his arm, only to squeal when he sees her standing next to him.

"Whoa, _Jesus_, Beckett! What the hell!"

She smirks at him. "Says the man who was unabashedly staring at my ass about thirty seconds ago."

He tries very hard to keep his eyes on hers. "Well, it was right there. All you're wearing is a towel. And _unabashedly_, Beckett? Don't talk dirty when you're wearing…that."

"Mmm," she says, looking down at herself. He eyes the place beneath her arm where the towel ends. All she'd have to do is lift her arm, and it would hit the floor.

"Whatcha thinking about?" she whispers.

He snaps his gaze back up to her face, sees her grinning. "Breakfast."

She moves toward him, all predatory, sinfully gorgeous. "Breakfast," she murmurs, placing one of her hands on the bed beside his hip. "Good idea."

"Yeah?" he asks.

"Yeah," she says. "I'm hungry."

And then he can't really think straight because her tongue is in his mouth, and come _on_, she is wearing a _towel_, how is he supposed to behave in these circumstances?

Lucky for them, his cell phone rings. He groans into her lips, and she grins. "Not mine for once," she says. She plucks his phone off the bedside table, hands it to him. "Alexis."

He answers the phone with a pout. "Hi, sweetie."

Kate sashays toward the bathroom, looking at him over her shoulder. He stares at her. Unabashedly. He is almost positive that Alexis is saying something he is supposed to be listening to, but when Kate drops the towel down so it rides low on her hips, and he can see all of her back, gloriously bare and smooth, he chokes. She smiles over her shoulder and, without turning around, shuts the door.

"Dad?" Alexis calls. "You okay?"

"Yeah," he rasps. "Just dying a little. I'll make it. Maybe."

He can hear Kate laughing through the bathroom door.

X-X-X-X-X

At breakfast, he keeps staring.

He'd planned to take her out, but by the time he got out of the shower, she'd already made one of those breakfast feasts that makes his heart flutter. He loves food and he loves her and it really does not get much better than this.

She notices him staring when she's on her second waffle. (Did he mention that he loves how much she eats?)

She stops with her fork halfway to her mouth. "What?" she says, but it's phrased like more of a demand then a question.

He shrugs, looks down at his bacon. "Nothing."

Her silence is rife with disbelief. He looks up again, sees her eyebrow arched in disbelief, too.

"You're quivering," she says.

"I'm what? I am not."

"You are. You are literally vibrating."

He puts his bacon down. "Fine. So what?"

"So go ahead. Ask."

"I don't have anything to ask."

She points her fork, still with waffle speared on the end, at his face. "That is your I-want-to-ask-Kate-something-I-think-she-will-say-no-to face."

"You named my faces?"

"It helps me mentally prepare for whatever you've got up your sleeve."

"You mean besides my muscular forearms?"

"Not as funny the second time you say it," she observes, then finally eats her waffle.

He frowns. He's said that before? When did he…oh. _Oh_. "Four years ago, Beckett? That's how much you love me, you remember what I said _four years ago_?"

She tenses a little. He wonders if he went too far. This thing between them, this love thing…it's still new. He doesn't want to scare her.

She looks down at her waffle. Shrugs. "I'm a cop. We have good memories." She looks up at him. "But also, yeah. That's how much."

If he kisses her now, she'll taste like maple syrup. The towel incident is still vivid, though, and after waiting this long, he is not going to let their first time be on a table next to a plate of waffles, not when she's in such a bad emotional place that she wakes up screaming in the middle of the night. And that is exactly what will happen if he kisses her now. They won't stop.

"Me too," he says.

She grins and he fidgets in his seat because it's not fair that she looks like that, it's not fair that she has him so helplessly in love that giving him a toothy smile makes him want to stare at her _all day_. Well, stare and do other things. He is a man of words, yes, but he is also a man of action, and he is dying to show her he loves her. But even a kiss would be too much. There's too much electricity in the air, too much want, too much _finally_ to take a chance. They have to get out of this house.

"So," he says, clearing his throat.

"So," she echoes. "You going to ask, or what?"

"I was thinking…"

She bites her lip. "Uh huh."

"We should go out. Explore."

She knits her eyebrows together, confused. "You thought I would say no to that?"

"No. I…Explore you, Kate."

She tilts her head, the beginnings of a smirk forming. "There are a lot of places I could go with that."

He realizes what he said, flushes. "No. Not that kind of…I mean, that would also be nice. But I meant, uh…"

She is laughing at him, he can see it in her eyes. She loves to make him squirm, which is great, since she's so goddamn good at it.

"You meant what?" she prompts softly, finally taking pity on him.

He swallows, tries to stop thinking about her naked. "I meant that we need to find you."

The smile drops off her face so fast he wonders if it was even there. She sets her fork down on her plate and goes very, very still. She won't look at him.

"And how do we go about doing that?" she asks.

He licks his lips, praying he's not going too far. "Well, you're more than that case. More than that precinct and that badge. I know that. But I don't think you always know that."

She swallows, nods. "Okay."

"So we need to find out who you are. Find out more about what you like and don't like. See how you are in situations that don't involve murder and guns and…destructive forces."

She looks up at him. "You've got some situations in mind?"

He nods. "A few. I planned, a little bit, after you told me that you'd come here with me."

The tiniest hint of a smile tugs on her lips. "Of course you did."

He leans over the table. "I'll never force you, Kate. We won't do this if you're not ready. We can wait."

She reaches out, brushes her hand along his cheek. "I'm tired of waiting. Aren't you?"

"I'll wait as long as you need me to."

She smiles. "I know. That's why I don't need you to."

X-X-X-X-X

It's funny, he thinks, that they've finally gotten to this place.

He's driving and she's staring out the window. About twenty minutes ago, she reached across the center console and held his hand. He thrilled at that, thrilled at all of it: her in his car, smiling at him, trusting him to drive her all over Long Island to "find" herself.

It's funny. Not comedic, just interesting, because this is Kate Beckett. She's fragile, certainly, but she's still Kate Beckett. She's still in control, still reserved, still careful with her words and her feelings. But she's his now. Every time she looks at him he sees it in her eyes, the words _I'm_ _yours_ shining there, and if he's honest, he doesn't think she'd mind if he told her that he could see it. Maybe she'd make a joke about possessiveness, but she wouldn't mean it.

"You think any harder over there, you're going to hurt yourself."

He looks over at her, surprised. She's still looking out the window, but she's smirking. He squeezes her hand. "Almost there."

She finally looks at him. "And where are we going?"

He shrugs. "You'll see."

And she does. He watches her closely when they pull up to the Bay Street Theater. He smiles when she rolls her eyes because he's rented it for the afternoon. She bites her lip when he explains that in order to find yourself, it is absolutely necessary to watch the top ten science fiction movies of all time. She picks their seats as he continues to explain himself. She sits gracefully, but he plops down next to her, jostling the tub of popcorn in his hands so that a few kernels fall into her lap.

"Of course," he explains, around a mouthful of popcorn, "we have to be somewhere at six. So we're only watching three."

"Only three," she muses, brushing the popcorn from her lap. He catches the teasing in her voice.

"Beckett," he says seriously. "Nothing helps you find yourself better than exploring the creative depths of one of the most underrated and wrongfully disrespected genres in all of pop culture."

"Right," she says, totally straight faced. "Of course."

The lights go out, and he can't really see her face anymore. He leans toward her. "I really love you."

She snickers. "Not more than you love science fiction, apparently."

"Science fiction can't keep me warm at night," he murmurs over the sound of the _Star Wars_ theme.

She looks at him, her face lit up by the screen. God, she's beautiful. "Who says I'll do that?"

He glares at her as he shoves another huge fistful of popcorn in his mouth.

X-X-X-X-X

He thinks that the best thing about Beckett telling him she's in love with him is that it makes her brave. The way she argues with him about the intricacies of the science fiction genre over dinner in Montauk isn't new; she's always argued with him. It's not new that she's showing him her supremely nerdy side either; she may have legs that go on for miles, and she may be a complete badass with a gun, but his Kate is the smartest woman he has ever met, and that smartness lends itself to a geekiness that he finds utterly irresistible.

No, what's different is that she isn't shy about letting herself bleed into her arguments.

"And you know," she says, "when Leia has that conversation, it's really a defining moment. I mean, think about the look on her face. The way she goes still? She's not a flat character, but she gets put into that category a lot, and she hates it. I know how she feels."

That last sentence. That's what he's talking about.

"You do?" he asks.

"Of course," she says off-handedly, sipping her wine. "And it's more than just working in a man's world. Nineteenth century literature has this conception of women that puts them into two categories: they're either an angel or a whore."

He stares at her. "Right."

"And really," she continues, oblivious to his stare, "that conception isn't much different from today. Say what you want about its flaws, but isn't that what _Sex and the City_ tried to overcome? Allow women to take on more of the dual role? The role men have always been allowed to inhabit?"

"_Sex and the City_," he repeats dumbly.

"Well, I'm not saying I'm Carrie Bradshaw," she laughs. "But the argument is valid. There's a fundamental identity crisis and I'm not exempt from working through it, too."

"And where's your place?" he asks, leaning over the table. This is the Kate they need to find. She's rarely mentioned work in the past hour, but she has talked about herself. She's talked about herself and work as two mutually exclusive ideas and he's thrilled.

"Mine?" she asks. She shrugs, looks down into her wine glass. "I don't know. Somewhere in the middle, I guess. I'm not an angel, I know that much."

"Not a whore either," he says quickly.

She smiles. "Not a whore, no."

"So really, what you have to do, is create your own identity."

She nods. "Exactly."

Their waiter arrives then, reminds him of the time. He's got one last place to show her, and they've got to get there before the sun sets.

X-X-X-X-X

The view from the Montauk Point Lighthouse leaves him a little breathless, and he's been here before. He wants it to leave her breathless too, and judging by the look on her face, it does.

They're at the top, staring out at the ocean while the sun sets on the horizon.

"Oldest lighthouse in New York State," he says to her. She's a few yards away from him, wandering around the circumference of the lighthouse. She wants to see it all. "Authorized by George Washington to be built in 1792. The foundation is 13 feet deep and 9 feet thick."

She turns to look at him. She's smiling. The sunset frames her from behind, sends rays of orange and red and pink shooting out around her, outlining her.

"Come here," she murmurs.

He hesitates for a moment, wanting to make sure he's memorized the way she looks right now. And then he moves until they're standing toe to toe, nose to chin, and he looks down at her and thinks about icicles on her eyelashes and tears in her eyes and the way she sounds when she laughs.

"Hi," he whispers.

"Hi."

He reaches up, twirls one of her waves of hair around his index finger. "Penny for them," he says.

"Sometimes I marvel at you," she answers.

"Marvel," he repeats, still twirling her hair.

"You're so sure," she continues.

"About you?" he asks. She nods slightly. He lifts a shoulder in a gentle shrug. "I know how I feel. And I know that won't change. But there are still uncertainties."

He lets go of her hair. He looks at her, and she looks at the floor.

"Like me," she says.

"Like you."

He doesn't try to make her look at him. Maybe that's why she does. He half expects Ryan or Esposito to interrupt because that's usually how it goes, but the boys are in the city and they're out here alone at the top of the oldest lighthouse in the state. His pulse picks up and she smells good and suddenly he can't help it.

He leans forward and brushes his lips over hers. She leans in farther, puts her hands on either side of his face and holds him closer, slips her tongue between his lips.

He lingers for a while, lets her take over. When she pulls away, she's a little breathless.

"Don't give up on me yet," she whispers.

"You say that like it's possible," he whispers back.

"Isn't it?"

"No," he says fiercely. "Never."


	8. Chapter 8

I would like to apologize in advance for how disgustingly sentimental this chapter is. Blame the muse. She won't budge on it.

* * *

_those who lead a sedentary life_

Castle knows it's not his job to tell Kate Beckett who she is. First of all because nobody, least of all him, has any business telling that woman what she should or should not be. She's got her own gravitational pull, and you don't fuck with something that exquisite. How could you?

Second of all, she already knows who she is. She might not know she knows, but she does. She knows what she is and what she wants to be. She's told him as much, though she's never told him in words. The more he thinks about that night he found her on her floor with her Glock in her hand, the more he realizes that was their turning point. It wasn't closing her mother's case. It wasn't getting their secrets out in the open. It was three words that weren't _I love you_, a simple _Come over. Please?_ and finding her exactly how she was instead of some adaptation of herself that was cleaned up for public perusal. That's what they are now. She's letting him love the pieces of her instead of frantically trying to glue them back together when he's not looking.

He loves her more for that.

It's been two weeks since the lighthouse. She's tanner now. Her hair has these lovely blonde streaks in it, and sometimes when they sit on the beach together, he separates them from the rest of her hair. She likes that.

He's still helping her find herself. He really has no idea what he's doing. All he knows is that he's trying to show her as many peaceful places as he can find, as many beautiful moments as he can create. Sometimes he gets lucky and just happens to seize them when they come along. He watches her, like he always has, and sees her changing. She still has nightmares. Her vision still clouds over every now and then. He doesn't try to bring her back anymore. She needs to disappear sometimes. It won't do her any good to ignore the wounds.

But she's changing. She's healing. She's realizing that she doesn't have to invent herself all over again. She's always been this person, always been someone outside that case—she just forgot for a while.

He takes her to Duck Walk Vineyards. He feels a little stupid for not thinking about it sooner—she loves wine. She laughs at him when he says that. He pouts. She kisses it away.

She does that a lot now. _Be still my heart. _

They spend the afternoon tasting wine. He may or may not be a little tipsy by the time they're allowed to walk up and down the rows of vines. Kate is teasing him, because the only reason they're allowed to walk through the vineyard after dark is because he knows the owner.

She stops, mid sentence, when they happen upon a quilt spread in the middle of a row. Had it still been daylight out, she would've seen it earlier. All they've got lighting their way is the moon and the stars, though, and he loves that because she's beautiful in the moonlight.

She looks at him. "You do this?" she asks.

He shrugs. "Maybe."

"Is this the part where I sigh and collapse into your arms because you're so romantic?"

"I think I gave up on impressing you with my romantic prowess about three years ago."

Her eyes flash with amusement. She's poking fun at him, but he can tell that she loves it and she loves him and she loves him more because he isn't offended that she's making a joke.

"Well," she says, dropping onto the blanket. "Come on, then. Let's get this over with."

"How could I resist such poetry?" he mutters.

He sits next to her. She shifts, shoves his legs apart. He raises his eyebrows. She ignores him, deposits herself between his legs and leans her back against his chest, the top of her head just beneath his chin. The moonlight catches on her hair. She moves her fingers over his knee, one of her endless patterns that he's so familiar with now.

Poetry, indeed.

"Let's play," she murmurs after a while.

He looks up at the moon. "Okay. Um…Oprah gives you a million dollars. What do you do?"

"Oprah? How do I know Oprah?"

"You're running the moment, _Detective_."

She laughs. "Okay. Fine. Uh…pay off student loans."

"Booooring."

"Not all of us make millions."

"Touché. Your turn."

"Well it's not like I can ask you what you'd do with a million dollars."

He smiles, still staring at the moon. "Rent an art museum for a day so that my partner can wander the galleries undisturbed."

She squeezes his knee. "I just got the weirdest sense of déjà vu."

He laughs.

"Okay," she starts. "Let's see. You're caught in a radioactive explosion—"

"That's horrific."

"Shut up, I'm not done. You're caught in a radioactive explosion, and you walk away alive and with one superpower. What is it?"

"Invisibility," he answers immediately.

She snorts. "So you can spy on me in the shower?"

"I'm sure sooner or later I'll be able to do that without being invisible, don't you think?"

He feels her shiver. He dips his head, plants a kiss on her shoulder. They're still waiting for _that_. She's not quite where she wants to be, and he can't imagine taking what she isn't ready to give. One of these days, they'll get there. But not today.

"No," he says after a moment. "So I could watch people, yes, but not in the shower. Just…on the street. So many stories you could write if you could watch people without them knowing."

She says nothing. It doesn't worry him much anymore when she's silent. He's learned it's not a bad thing. It's just her.

"You?" he asks.

"I'd fly," she says. "Like Superman."

"Why's that?"

"I don't know. It just seems so…free."

She relaxes against him a little more, nearly melting into his chest. They don't say anything for a while. It's his turn to ask a question, but nothing comes to mind, and he's content to enjoy her silence as much as her voice.

"I always thought being still was wrong," she murmurs after a while.

He glances down at the top of her head, wishes he could see her face. "What do you mean?"

"This," she says, still tracing a pattern on his knee. "I never let myself do this. Just sit and be silent and still."

"Never? You take baths."

"And read," she says. "But even when I don't read, my mind—it still moves."

He swallows. She's trying to tell him something, he's sure of it. He puts his right arm around her, leaving his left to hold him up. She moves her hand from his knee to his forearm, brushes her fingertips over his skin.

"You must get tired," he says quietly.

She nods. "Yeah. I do."

He wants to offer himself up, wants to tell her that he'll run the race for her, but it seems empty and not enough, and she doesn't need him to fix her.

So he doesn't say anything.

"I think I've always been like that," she continues. "Even before my mom died. She used to smile at me and say 'Katie, honey, just sit. Just be.'"

"What'd you say?"

"Nothing. Just rolled my eyes, probably. There was nothing to say. I didn't understand why she'd want that for me."

"Do you understand more now?"

"I think so. I don't know."

She's quiet for a while, trailing her fingertips over his arm, and he has to literally bite his tongue to stay quiet. This, he's still learning. How to let her get there in her own time.

"That's the thing about you, Castle."

The shift in direction leaves his head spinning. "Me?" he asks.

"You," she says. "You're the loudest, busiest person I know. I think I told Montgomery once that you were a nine year old on a sugar rush."

He doesn't like where this is going.

"But then, I don't know, as loud and colorful and busy as you are, there's something about what you do for me."

He likes this better.

"You sort of…I don't know, you make me feel….something."

"Something good?"

"Something wonderful."

She doesn't say words like _wonderful_ very often. He really, really likes it. Really.

"And I don't know, it's not like I don't still have the compulsion to run. Away from you, or away from other things. I still want to move so badly sometimes that my whole body aches. But you make staying more attractive. You make me want to be still."

He can't help it; he moves, wraps both of his arms around her and holds her tight. She laughs quietly, but she doesn't fight him. He buries his head in her neck, his nose in her hair.

"Now that's poetry," he says, his voice muffled from her hair.

She laughs again. "It's no Cummings."

He lifts his head, puts his mouth by her ear. "'I carry your heart with me.'"

She shivers again. He waits. She'll finish it. She will.

"'I carry it in my heart, '" she quotes back. She turns her face to his, finds his lips.

He pulls away after a while, his eyes still closed. "'And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart. '"


	9. Chapter 9

Yes, I realize I broke my promise to post every day. I have no excuses.

* * *

_and those who remain perfectly still. _

She's still now.

He doesn't know how else to explain it. They were her words first, but they fit, so he steals them. He doesn't think she'll mind.

Since he met her, she's always been in constant motion. She's always been on a quest, and even when she wasn't actively investigating her mother's case, it was still a part of her. In his head, he likens it to running on a treadmill. She's been running since she was nineteen, her eyes always facing forward, always focused on some endpoint that was never closer, no matter how much she kicked up the speed. And then, suddenly, the treadmill was off and she was exactly where she'd wanted to be for so long, except she didn't know how to be there, didn't know how to breathe normally, because she could only remember breathing while in the middle of a sprint.

So really, what Kate Beckett was learning to do, was be still. Breathe. No more chasing. No more straight-ahead focus. She needed to be still and look around her, see everything instead of just one thing. For the past four weeks, he's wanted to show her that. He hopes he has.

It's their last night in the Hamptons. Tomorrow they'll drive back to Manhattan, and the day after that, she'll go back to work with a badge on her hip and a gun on her hand and he'll have to pray all day, every day, that she doesn't lose her stillness. He'll be there, of course. He'll always be there. But he was there before, too, and she almost killed a man. Collapsed onto her floor with a gun. Shattered.

He shakes his head. He won't think about that. That was before. Before their month in the Hamptons, before he fell more in love with her than he thought was possible, before they found their equilibrium and she discovered the freedom in motionlessness.

"Hey you," she murmurs in his ear.

He grins, remembers the text message he sent so long ago. "You are mocking me and I still find it sexy."

"Well," she says, her fingers playing at his ribs, "I am sexy. Can't help it."

He turns to look at her, immediately freezes.

They spent all day on the beach. Around six she disappeared to shower and get ready. He's taking her to a nearby boardwalk where there's strings of lights and jazz and nobody that will recognize him because it's not a place the Hamptons crowd goes. She's been tightlipped about what she's wearing. Drove him crazy all day.

Worth it now.

"You look incredible," he says.

And she does. Something about his Kate in a dress has always made him a little lightheaded, but after a month with her never out of reach? It is _so_ much better.

And to think he hasn't even had all of her yet.

He shudders involuntarily, and she gives him one of those smoldering looks that says she knows _exactly_ what he's thinking about. She's been giving him those looks a lot lately. They'll combust any day now, and that's okay because _she's_ okay.

"Do I?" she teases.

"Humble," he says.

"Hard to be when you look at me like that."

"We should go," he answers.

She tilts her head. "Are we running late?"

"No. But if we don't leave now, we won't at all."

She laughs.

X-X-X-X-X

Of course there is dancing. It's jazz and there's lights and, okay, he may have known there would be dancing and he may have picked this place just because he wanted to dance with her.

Maybe.

"You can stop staring at them like that," she says.

He looks at her from across the table, caught off guard. "What? Who?"

"Them," she says, nodding at the dance floor. "I know what you're thinking."

"Do you?"

She looks down at her empty plate, then eyes her half-empty wine glass. It's her second glass. She looks up at him.

"You going to ask, or what?"

"Am I wearing my I-want-to-ask-Kate-something-I-think-she-will-say-no-to face?"

"You're wearing a face, all right. I'm afraid you're going to start naming our children."

He chokes on his wine, sputters, and she laughs. He stares at her, wide-eyed. "Our what now?"

"Rick," she says, standing up. She holds out her hand. "Dance with me."

"_I'm_ supposed to ask."

Her eyes sparkle at that. "You coming, or what?"

He takes her hand, leads her to the dance floor as the song changes. She smiles at him as he wraps one arm around her waist, pulls her close and folds their hands together, holds them over his heart. The trumpet croons low, a ballad that's romantic and cliché and everything that they aren't, really, but it works anyway. It's their last night. He's been horribly sentimental all day, and she's been patient with him. Part of him thinks it's because she loves him and so she's willing to sacrifice, but another part of him thinks she likes it more than she lets on.

"Miles Davis," she says in his ear.

"Hmmm?" he hums.

"Miles Davis," she says again. "That's who this is. It's called _I Waited For You_."

He smiles. "Is there anything you don't know?"

"Plenty," she says, weaving her fingers up through his hair at the nape of his neck. "Why you're so afraid to go back home, for starters."

He stops, the smooth rocking back and forth they were doing interrupted. She keeps moving and he follows her lead; they're dancing again because she's caught him. She always does.

"I don't know what you mean," he evades.

"Isn't that my line?" she asks.

He's glad he can't see her face. She has this way of looking at him that burns right through him.

Damn it, this trip is supposed to be about her.

"I'm fine," he tells her.

She moves closer, presses against him. Her breath is hot at his ear. "Please don't lie to me," she whispers.

He closes his eyes. He doesn't want to. "I'm sorry," he says.

"For?"

"Lying. Being afraid."

"You can't be sorry for being afraid. Being afraid makes you alive."

He swallows. He's the writer in this relationship only in title; she emanates what his creative writing professor called the X factor. Can't be taught, can't be learned, can't be imitated.

"Are _you_ afraid?" he asks.

"Of course," she says matter-of-factly. "I'm always afraid. I'm a coward."

"That's not true—" he starts to argue, but she cuts him off.

"Yes, it is."

They're silent for a while. The trumpet dips low and then lower, smoothes over them. He turns his face, his turn to whisper in her ear.

"You're the bravest person I know," he says.

She clutches the back of his neck. "Even if that's true, it doesn't mean I'm not afraid. Bravery, well, it's not about the absence of fear, is it? It's just about…getting past fear."

"But that's exactly what you did with us," he points out.  
She tenses in his arms. "I'll always have my moments."

He won't let her bypass how far they've come. "But you'll always come back, too."

He realizes, only after he says it, that there isn't a hint of a question in his voice. He doesn't need to be scared, because at some point over the past month, he stopped being afraid that she wouldn't love him in the morning. She's unpredictable, certainly, and Lord knows she could have any man she wanted, but he doesn't worry about that. He doesn't worry at all. She's his, and he's hers, and well, that's been inevitable for years. Now that they've confessed it, lived it for a month, the only thing left that's still inevitable is one of them stumbling a little and then promptly finding their way back.

Because they'll always find their way back.

"When we first came here," she murmurs, "you had to find me. Every night and every day and sometimes multiple times in as little as an hour. You had to find me because I couldn't do it myself."

Her voice threads through the sound of the trumpet, braids with it, makes a sultry music in his ear that leaves him completely, utterly gone for her. X factor, indeed. She still has trouble finding words sometimes, but the intimacy of the past month, the fact that she's not trying to hide the worst parts of herself anymore—everything they are now lends itself to these moments when she's stunningly well-spoken.

"But then, you know, it got easier," she continues. "And you stopped finding me."

He frowns. "I…stopped?"

"Stopped," she repeats. "You didn't have to find me, because you helped me find myself."

Oh. Well that's…wow. Maybe she should write his next book.

"It's like…" she starts, then stops. She huffs impatiently. He frowns again, wonders why she's irritated, but her fingers tighten in his hair and he realizes she's annoyed with herself. She speaks in analogies and stories and comparisons, and though he thinks that she might believe it's for his benefit, he knows better. She has to do it so that she can understand herself.

"Jane Austen," she tries again. "She writes these beautiful love stories, but it was never the romance that moved me. If you look at her best heroines—at Lizzy Bennet, and Emma Woodhouse, Marianne Dashwood, even—they all have this fundamental blindness."

His head is spinning just a little bit. There's a fairly good chance she's too smart for him. He tries to keep up anyway.

"Blind to what?" he asks.

"Everything," she answers. "But mostly, who they are. When Austen allows them to fall in love, she isn't saying that they can't exist without a man. She isn't saying that Darcy or Knightly define the women who fall for them. She's saying that they offer them the freedom, the safety, to explore who they are. The good, of course, but the bad, too. The flaws."

"So…?" he says. He feels incredibly stupid.

She pulls away from him, meets his eyes for the first time during this entire conversation.

"So you gave me the freedom to find me. The good and the bad. I'm not saying I'm not still broken, but you're right. I'm always going to come back. Maybe you'll find me, or I'll find me, but one of us will always find whoever is lost. Always."

Yeah. He can't really say it much better than that. So he doesn't bother. He just kisses her, crushes her body against his, doesn't even care when she gasps in surprise.

When they finally pull away, she's decidedly more winded than dancing could have ever made her.

"Castle," she says, smoothing one of his lapels under her hand. It's the same thing she did when she rescued him from that bank what seems like forever ago.

She looks up at him, electricity in her eyes. It hits him then. This is happening. Tonight. They're happening tonight.

Her voice is dark. "Take me home."


	10. Chapter 10

Last chapter, folks. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Hopefully we'll all survive tomorrow night...oi vei.

* * *

_[…and] then the light and climate will be changed in a way impossible to foretell._

She's changed him.

She laughs when he tells her that, and he knows why. It's because in a lot of ways, all she can see is the ways he's changed her. And he has. She's still and she breathes better than he does sometimes and she's this exquisite being that is so completely at peace with her dozens of scars that sometimes he just marvels at her.

But he's changed, too. He's realized that sometimes, it's okay to move. Okay to run after things. He ran after her. He's learned to run, learned to breathe without cramping. He remembers the cramps vividly. Demming and Josh and a sniper that made her die in his arms and her body, huddled in a ball on her floor, sobbing. But she taught him to breathe. Brought out the fighter in him at the same time he brought out the lover in her.

On the morning of her first day back at work, she wakes up just like she did that first morning in the Hamptons. He does too. She gets ready for her run. He watches. She starts to leave, stops at the door. She turns around, biting her lip.

"Castle."

He sits up. Something is wrong.

"What is it?"

"Come with me."

Oh. _Oh._

He bolts out of bed. She laughs quietly, puts an arm out to stop him when he tries to rush past her. "Hey. I'll wait."

He hurries anyway.

When he steps out on the concrete after her, he panics for a second. He is not in shape enough for this. But no way in hell is he not going.

"Ready?" she asks.

He nods. "Always."

Someday it'll be cliché. Not today.

X-X-X-X-X

She is absolutely crazy about him.

There's sweat dripping from his forehead but he's grinning at her as he follows her back into her apartment. Kate isn't entirely sure why she invited him to come, but she did, and she's glad, and God, she's crazy about him.

She closes the door behind her, turns around to face him. He's staring at her. He's not grinning anymore. For a second, she drifts back to the look on his face when he asked her to go with him to the Hamptons. The way he'd enveloped her in his arms when she said yes, and the way she'd let him, her forehead resting on his shoulder. That's when the two halves of her life collided, and all that survived the collision was who she's become, him, and a new perspective that's changed everything else.

She reaches forward and peels his t-shirt off of him, dropping it on the floor at their feet. He watches as she rests her hands on his chest, one hand over his heart. She kisses the place where his collarbone sinks, right in the middle of his chest, and feels him exhale slowly underneath her lips. She parts her lips, darts her tongue out to brush his skin, and tastes the saltiness of his sweat.

She clutches his sides as she kisses across his chest slowly, trailing her tongue over his skin. She wants to say something, wants to tell him how much he means to her and how she never thought that case could be anything other than a nightmare. She can't think of the right words. Instead she keeps kissing him, tracing her nails lightly over his skin. She moves her mouth up the column of his neck, stops right in front of his lips.

His hands move along the small of her back, underneath her t-shirt, and then he lifts it over her head. He trails the tip of his index finger along the contours of her skin next to the outline of her sports bra. She holds his gaze and lifts her arms, takes the bra off and drops it onto the floor.

He closes the distance and kisses her. She kisses him back, holding him insistently against her body, her naked chest against his. He walks her backward toward the bathroom. Once there, he reaches around her, turning the shower on as hot as it will go. She pushes his shorts off next, then holds his eyes as she pulls her own off. He wraps his arms around her waist the second she steps out of them and guides her backward into the shower and under the spray.

They're soaked in seconds but she doesn't notice, wrapped up as she is in him. They've done this a dozen times now since that last night in the Hamptons, but it's still new. Still electrifying. The energy builds between them and then spikes when he presses her against the tile wall. They kiss until she's dizzy, the heat of the water mixing with the heat of him and them and God, she's never felt this way about anyone.

He breaks their kiss, presses his forehead to hers. He says her name, breathes it like a prayer.

"Thank you," he says.

She runs her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. "For what?"

He pushes away a strand of wet hair that's stuck to her cheek. "For letting me in."

Her heart races, or maybe it plummets, or maybe it's actually rising in the air, higher and higher, and she's rising with it. Their eyes hold. He trails his hands down her sides then down the backs of her thighs. He lifts her and she wraps her legs around him.

When he moves into her, she lets her head fall back, her eyes flutter closed.

"God, Castle."

He peppers her collarbone with kisses. He moves out and then back in, and she tries to remember how to breathe.

"Beautiful," he whispers.

That doesn't make it easier. He leans into her, his mouth at the curve of her neck. She clings to him, her arms and legs wrapped around him. When the heat starts to build and the edges of her vision start to get fuzzy, she murmurs into his ear.

"Castle," she calls urgently. She needs to say it. "Castle, I…" He thrusts harder than before, deeper, and she sees stars.

"You what?" he says, his breathing ragged. Hers is too.

Another deep, rough thrust, and she digs her nails into his skin. He sucks on her shoulder, hard enough to leave a mark.

"Kate?"

"I love you," she tells him, gasping for breath. "Castle, I _love_ you."

The second the words are out he hits the right spot and she falls over the edge with a moan. Amidst a fierce shiver, somewhere in the middle of her fall, she feels his breath next to her ear.

"Love you too."

And then he falls too, and when she comes back to herself, he's setting her feet back on the tile. He pulls her in close, his chin resting on top of her head, and she breathes him in. His hands move across her back, ghosting over her skin, his mouth suddenly next to her ear. He pulls her earlobe into his mouth; she shudders, wonders if he'll say something, but he doesn't. There's nothing else to say.

They wash each other and then dry each other, too. His arms come around her from behind as she leads him back into the bedroom. She turns to look up at him.

"Want to go catch some bad guys?" she asks.

He smiles. "I thought you'd never ask."


End file.
